What Can Disney Do?

30Jun07

I’ve been posing this question a lot since Universal Orlando announced that they’ll be adding a Harry Potter-themed land to their Islands of Adventure theme park.

But before I answer this question, I would like to elaborate on why I care.  I live in Orlando–theme park capital of the world.  Here we have Disney, Universal, Sea World, and some smaller ones (like The Holy Land Experience…one that I have not yet been to, nor will I probably go at all).  I’m also majoring in theme park management in college, which may sound retarded, but its basically an amped-up business administration major.  So naturally, I would care about such a thing.

So I’ve been doing some research on this issue.  Disney has one theme park that is in dire-need of some new “E-Tickets” (that’s what we call major attractions here in the O-Town), and in order for them to even think about striking back at Universal in 2009, they’d better get to work.  That park–Disney-MGM Studios.

There’s talk that the park will change its name to Disney-Pixar Studios in the next year or so, which would definitely be a great start (to me, especially, since I just praised their new movie Ratatouille to high levels).  But, if they’re going to change the name like that, they need to focus on making the park very Pixar-like.

Now, I’m not telling them to go replacing quality attractions such as The Great Movie Ride, Rock n’ Roller Coaster, or Tower of Terror.  Those rides need to be left alone as much as possible.  But, at the same time, there are other things that can change.

The first of those changes is, of course, to get the new Toy Story Mania attraction up and running–they’re working on it now, and its supposed to open right around the same time that Universal’s new The Simpsons Ride is slated to open.  Now, they need to retheme the whole area to be very Pixar based.  I also wish they’d scrap that terrible Muppetvision 4-D show.  It’s absolutely terrible.  Replace it with something like The Incredibles 4-D or something to that extent–just get rid of Muppetvision.

So, that’s Toy Story Mania and The Incredibles 4-D that we have so far (keep in mind: The Incredibles 4-D is my idea, and they probably have no intention of using it).  Now, we need something based off of Cars.  How about a coaster.  There was talk about possibly opening “Crush’s Coaster,” which would be yet another Finding Nemo attraction (they’ve already got two at Walt Disney World…don’t think they need another).  I got an idea–let’s NOT do that.  Instead, let’s make a Cars coaster, which would be right along side the Lights, Motors, Action stunt show (which is rethemed to Cars).

Alright…now we need their new one, Ratatouille.  Should they go through with this whole thing, let’s see them change one of their restaurants out to be the restaurant in the movie (but not too expensive or anything like that).  The only way I could see a ride based on this is if they did it on the chase scene at the beginning of the movie, and that would be a water ride.  Do I see it happening?  No.  But that’s wishful thinking.

Monster’s Inc. already has an attraction at Magic Kingdom.  I got an idea.  Close it.  It’s a bad attraction, and probably won’t last a year.  Bring Monsters. Inc over to MGM (or Pixar Studios, if that’s really what’s going to happen to the park), and make a ride out of it.  It’d be a good ride, just like the one in California.  Sounds like a good idea, right?

Now you have basically every Pixar property in the world in one park.  People love Pixar.  It sounds like a really good idea, right?  Maybe they’ll take note.  Maybe they’ll find a way to defeat Harry Potter…

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